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Golden Venture freedom effort hits 20th year

By Stephanie Reighart

DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS

Updated:
06/10/2013 08:09:26 AM EDT

Lee Ann Strine waved at the inmates lining the north-facing windows at York County Prison at 4 p.m. on Sunday.

She smiled at the figures of men she could see a football field's length away, just as she had done every Sunday when more than 100 Chinese nationals were held at the prison from 1993 to 1997 after the Golden Venture ran aground in New York.

"I think they get the sense they're forgotten," Strine said. "So we wave to remind them they're not."

Strine continued waving for an hour - the length of the 20th anniversary vigil held by members of the People of the Golden Vision, an advocacy group formed to aid the detainees.

The Golden Venture was packed with 286 refugees mostly from Fujian Province, China, escaping to America for a variety of reasons.

Once they were rounded up by authorities, about 100 of them were sent to York County Prison, where, as a result of a get-tough-on-immigration policy by the Clinton Administration, they remained for years while the courts sorted out their status. All those who remained were released by February 1997.

Byron Borger, owner of the Hearts & Minds bookstore in Dallastown and an active member of the advocacy group, spoke about the lessons learned from their struggle to free the men.

DAILY RECORD / SUNDAY NEWS - FILE A rescuer helps an illegal Chinese alien from the grounded Golden Venture in 1993, after it ran into a sandbar. The story of the passengers from the freighter is told
in a film that King helped make possible when he provided the $50,000 that allowed Peter Cohn to complete the documentary.

"It was a painful time. People's lives were at stake," he said. But through the process, members learned citizenship skills, tenacity, compassion and mercy.

Joan Maruskin, an active advocate for the detainees, took a moment to remember the 1996 immigration legislation that eventually allowed for the release of the detainees.

She urged those at the vigil to contact their federal representatives and voice support for a path to legalization for immigrants.

"It will take a whole lot of years, but we will have a path to citizenship for immigrants," Maruskin said.

After all these years, there
still are 20 men once held at
the York County prison who
are now living across the U.S.
without secure status, said Jeff Lobach, an attorney in York who represented many of the detainees pro bono.

"We still have more work to do (in getting legislation passed)," he said. "With the Golden Venture, our eyes were opened."

Just as vigil attendees did nearly two decades ago, the whole group concluded with a salvation hymn while waving to the inmates.